The short story "Sorrow" was written by Russian playwright and writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904).
An old man must take his wife to the hospital before she expires. Then we learn that it's a 20 mile trip on an awful road, that it's biting cold and snowing, that the man is an alcoholic (and a mean one at that), that his horse is a wreck and then real adversity eventually sets in.